Dear community partners and members,
The Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (OCADSV) cautions the use of the at-home rape kits provided by MeToo Kit company. The MeToo Kit company, as mentioned on their website "is founded on the principle that [survivors] should be able to take back control." However, OCADSV believes that the at-home kits have the potential to cause harm to survivors.
What is your most memorable story?
One of the moments that has impacted us the most was sitting in court watching a young woman representing herself in a hearing for the contested Family Abuse Protection Act order. She spoke on her own behalf with confidence and strength. She did not allow the glares and muttered comments of her former partner to bother her, nor did the fact that he had an attorney to assist him.
How do you address organizational barriers?
As we move closer to the OCADSV annual conference I have had the chance to reflect on the reason the theme “Moving from Theory to Practice” is so important to our community. It is a common saying used heavily in academia, especially in social work circles. For those of you that don’t speak this language, just know that when you answer the hotline, go to court, or sort donations you are practicing the theory that we are a community that needs one another to thrive and be our best.
This begins on the individual level when you first the meet the client, as the client moves through the process, the community resources and support are paramount. Finally, you want to think about where the funds came from in order for you to provide these services. Sometimes practice means tracking the number of clients you worked with each month.
It’s April and things have really ramped up with the Osnium OS-soft rollout. At this point there are three things that you need to be on top of to ensure your experience with the new database goes as smoothly as possible. Hopefully you have installed Osnium at your agency and have started to enter data so that you can learn the new database’s ins and outs. As we press forward, here are the things you need to be aware of and do.
By now it’s hard to imagine that anyone in the social service sector would be unaware of the current opioid epidemic—the largest anthropogenic epidemic in human history, according to University of Washington professor Dr. Gary Franklin. From 2005-2016, opioid use in the United States fueled a 51% increase in the combined death rate from drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, or suicide.[1] The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines the opioid epidemic on their website with the following three points:
